Richard Masur Quotes

There were two things that became apparent, pretty quickly into the process. One was that the muscles didn't take as much reconditioning as I thought they would. It was more like voice acting than I thought it would be. You're using your whole body and there are things that are different, but when you are doing a character, even in the booth, nobody is watching but my face will do different things when I do different characters.

I'm an actor. I'm trying to be the character and do what they're doing.

To me the voice has always been the way to start any character. Once I find that, I'm good to go.

I have always like doing accents; I find it much easier to get into character for me.

I worked with some of the best actors I've ever worked with: Mel Blanc and Don Messick. They could play a scene against themselves. Think of the characters that Mel created, and they're as good or better than any performance anyone has ever given. I mean: Daffy Duck! Think of the specific voice Mel gave Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig... It's just astonishing.

I love voice over work. To me, voice over and animation is such an art, because you focus solely on your voice. You do not focus on how to speak, combined with facial expressions, movement, etc. You as the actor need to convey all those things with only your voice.

I was kind of scared at first to do that [vice-over] because when you're on set, a lot of the things going on around you - the environment and playing off other actors - and that's what makes it easier and helps you to be in your character. So, realizing you're not going to have that and you're going to be secluded in this booth, it's like, "How am I going to be a character when I'm just in these walls?"

I find the voice is what I look for first and foremost with just about every character I play.

Mine is an actor's voice, not a singer's voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.

Voice acting is very different from live-action. You only have one tool to convey emotion. You can't sell a line with a look. It's all about your vocal instrument. Doing voice work is also great because you don't have to get your hair done, which I despise.

I guess voice acting is just fun, interesting to say...but it is.

I guess the biggest challenge to doing any kind of animation voice work is that you only have your voice to tell the story.

With voice overs... you're not thinking about the camera. So your voice becomes this thing that you can manipulate. And depending on the character you're doing, it's all concentration on your voice.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

The good and wonderful thing about my whole career is that I've always felt that the audience, if I do it well, will track wherever I go, whether it's President or a lawyer or bad guy or good.

I would quite like to do a different accent or play something so different from myself because Olivia, the character I play in this film, is similar to me.

I've played American characters so many times now, it's so natural to me. But when I play American, I stay in the American accent from the minute I get the job till the minute I wrap.

I don't know if I am cut out to playing a bad character or not - I really should give it a shot. I would like to play the voice of a baddie, but that's really just a cop-out!

I've done literally 100, 150 different characters.

The voice is always the starting place for me with a character.

Voices have always been my way into a character. I usually approach the voice first.

You just have to play the character.

The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.

We can list a bunch of actors who have embodied characters that aren't their nationalities, and I think that's the beauty of acting.

I think it's that if you don't have the visual, you have to infuse the full personality into the voice. Think of Daffy Duck. I mean, what the heck? I was playing around with the Daffy Duck voice today when I was coming back from driving my kid to school.